a small home (below)
that once sheltered
more than 40 people
is now the venue
where clan leader
Biba Marghianihelps
settle disputes.
What is the sur
vival secret of groups
like the Svan: geo
graphic isolation?tra
ditions?fate? Says one
local expert: "Svan
don't usually question
such things."
What is the bond that links the Black Sea people of Georgia and Tur
key to their past, to each other, and to their future? "The primitive belief
in the forces of nature," mused Shota Chartolani, an archaeologist I'd
met in the mountains of Svaneti. "I think this was the main force that
helped these tribes to survive."
The forces of nature are still the source of their strength. I had seen it
in the easy rhythm of summer days high in the mountain meadows, in
the boys riding the stallions bareback up and down the rocky slopes. I
had felt it in the ecstatic music of a black-haired Laz man playing his
kemence in a dripping, darkening forest; in the propitiations of blood or
wine that mark every important passage from the building of a boat in
Turkey to the departure of a guest in Georgia; in the way the HemSin
dance the horon for pulsing, hypnotic hours, perhaps no longer remem
bering that its slow-moving circle connects them to the frenzied bacchic
dances of earliest Greece.
The people of the Black Sea have indeed survived by honoring the
forces of nature. But do they even think about how deeply their lives have
been shaped by them? They have no need to. They belong to them.
[7
many more have dissolved in the vast sea known as modern life.
CRUCIBLE OF THE GODS